Hello Home

So after Paris I went to Strasbourg and saw the famous clock then on to barcelona. There is apparently a lot of crime there. It's a thing. Like "oh is the crime in Somalia really bad?" "Well be careful, but it's not like it's Barcelona." So my second robbing happened here. A bit of a setback, but overall the city was still beautiful. I got to see some of the Gaudi architecture around the city. Reminds me of Hundertwasser so I really liked it. 

Then after Barcelona I went to Geneva. First time that I have been to the french speaking part of Switzerland. Holy moly it was expensive. I bought a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and it cost about $15. No drink. No chips. No complementary foot massage with your meal. So I mostly walked around the city and took pictures. It was pretty at least.

Then after a couple of nights in Switzerland, I went to Berlin. I stayed there for almost a week. I had a delicious kebab from Mustafa's. nom nom....noms. I got to walk around and see the Artsy part of the berlin wall. tons of fun. Then after Berlin I visited Amanda in Wien. I completely loved that city. Great public transportation, nightlife, and attitude. :) After Wien, I went to Rome. Beautiful City. One of the days I was there the city went on strike. All of the public workers etc. I went outside to do some sightseeing and this is what I saw.

It all seemed pretty peaceful though. And since all of the workers were on strike I couldn't have done any tours or anything anyway. So, hey, might as well join them. We just walked along around the colosseum and listened to the loud music they played. It was more like a concert with random blurbs of rallying italian than a strike.

Next I went to Florence. It was beautiful, but right about this time I was running out of money and energy to be on the road this long. I took a tour of Pitti palace, but ended up just finding an abandoned windowsill and read shakespeare. I just pretended that I lived there instead of touring the palace. 

Next I went to London. It was nice to be back on English speaking ground. 

I stayed with some Friends from Hendrix for a few days and rested up. I did a little bit of sightseeing but mostly just walked around and read in the park. 

Then on to Scotland. 

I. Love. It. Here. 

Everyone is so friendly here. It reminds me of how the south is supposed to be in America. Everyone is friendly and chatty. My first night here, a man at the bus station wanted to shake my hand because I was from Arkansas. The bus driver let me drive for free because I was confused and was supposed to have bought a ticket somewhere else.  He even asked which stop I needed and made sure that I didn't miss it. 

Since I have been here I have been trying to see as much as I can of the country. I went on a driving tour of the highlands and saw Loch Ness. I didn't see Nessie, but I imagine that she was asleep or on vacation. Beautiful Country though.

There is also a lot of rivalry between the two Glasgow football (soccer) teams: Celtics and Rangers. I was advised before I came to simply not choose a side. They take it pretty seriously here. Friendships are ruined over this stuff. I passed a pub that had this sign on the door. 

"No football colours please. We dont like stabbings"

It all comes from original rifts between Catholics (Celtics) and Protestant (Rangers). 

The classes here are also really strange. Back home you have a syllabus that tells you what to read before each class. You discuss those readings in class. You take notes in lectures. Here, they like to be a bit more vague about things. They have lectures and tutorials (seminars) ,and you don't exactly have assigned reading. They give you four pages of suggested reading and tell you to be able to discuss things in your tutorials. It's all a mess. 

The lectures also seem a lot more elementary. Maybe because you have gallons of extra reading to do to fill in the blanks they leave. 

At long last

So I have been meaning to start this blog for a while now... Not sure how useful or interesting any of my information will be but here goes. Started my trip in Malaga, by far my favourite place so far. As soon as I got to the Hostel I found some other English speaking people that I hung out with for pretty well the rest of the time. Picasso was from Malaga. So there was a neat museum there for him, which I didn't visit. I meant to but ended up being waaaay to busy laying on the beach. The night life was also perfect there. The spanish start drinking pretty late though, the clubs are all pretty empty before 1 am. So this was my Malaga trip

                                           Dana at night

                                           Dana during the day

I also went to a bull fight. I knew it would be a little rough, but I had no idea. I watched six bulls meet their doom. It was an experience, but I won't be doing that again. Dark stuff.

Malaga was beautiful though, we went to the top of a huge mountain there and took pictures (it was a hill I guess, but i was hungover so it may as well have been everest)

Next, I went to Lisbon to meet weezy and her brother. So as soon as I arrive I decide that it would be easier to just have a taxi take me to the Hotel and not have to worry about it... So I show the Taxi driver the address of the hotel and ask him to go. He rolls his eyes a bit the way all taxi drivers seem to do and agrees to go. I haven't yet met a taxi driver who doesn't act inconvenienced to drive you somewhere. Anyway, 15 minutes later we arrive in Amadora, which isn't actually in Lisboa, its the ghetto outside of it. Great. So the driver stops at a park and tells me that the hotel is just around the corner but he couldn't drive his car there. Fine, which way? He points a bit more and speaks some spanish to me that I clearly haven't understood the whole time. I walk around and see no hotels at all, but find several places to get a massage or have your nails did. I call louise. They are headed to the hotel now, they'll meet me there. They can't really give me directions because I have no idea where I am. I call the hotel, again, no help. So I ask a random bystander who looks friendly. FALSE. Not friendly, he assured me that he knew where the hotel was, started walking to it, asked to see the address again, snagged my phone and took off. I chased him as far as I could with my huge backpack and purse. Jerk. A nice old couple took me to their house and let me use their internet and ended up actually driving me to the hotel. Bless them. I would have wandered around for hours if it weren't for them. I didn't do much else while I was in Lisbon. Weezy, Manuel, and I went to the beach the next day, but other than that I slept, and that's it. By the third day I was just ready to get out of there.

Next I went to London. It was a huge relief to speak English again. This was mostly just a refuel stop. I got conditioner and things of that nature and bought a new phone that I can use in Scotland next year. I also did bicycle rental and rode around Hyde park. There are these really neat proms in Albert hall in London for this month where there are classical music concerts every night. Might have been fun to go to one, but as usual my desire for food outweighed any other. Then I rode around the park some more and made friends with the swans.

Next was Paris. I met another english speaker in the Hostel and decided to go see sights with him. I am starting to feel like a bum following people around haha. we decided to walk to Notre Dame and then from there to the Eiffel tower. We were going to take the Metro, but all of the lines along the way were under construction or something, so we just walked. It was nice, I got to see a lot of things I have missed other times. There were a bunch of vendors selling really old books along the Seine. I am such a sucker for old books. I had to keep reminding myself that I don't speak french and couldn't afford them. Then we decided to just buy a bottle of wine and sit in the grass by the eiffel tower. There is always someone selling something there. We got suckered into buying a 2 Euro rose, but I quite liked it afterward.

Artsy, no?

So we stayed and drank our wine and then some champagne and met some people from new zealand to hang out with... That was pretty much it for paris, the next night I went to sleep at like ten o'clock.

That's all for now and I suppose I'll write more when there's more to tell.